By Len McGrane
When it comes to kitchen cabinets I feel I can speak. My wife and I recently went through our old kitchen and completely remade it. Not a trace of the old cabinets and cupboards remain.
Overall, we are glad we made the change. Although just this morning my wife noticed a small scratch on the new black bench top. Neither of us think it would have been noticeable on our old cream-colored bench with its textured surface that was "tired" but appeared largely unmarked.
But this aside, our painted kitchen cabinets now look more modern and still tone in with the walls which have kept their original color. The knobs, hinges and accessories are all new, and this is a good thing, we feel. At one point we wondered if we might have built to the wrong design, but the visuals in the kitchen are pleasant and, as I say, we are pleased we made the changes.
We did the work with a friend, and this was a good thing. He was a builder and had put together many kitchens in his time. He advised us which kitchen cabinet manufacturers had good reputations, and then helped us talk through the pros and cons of unfinished kitchen cabinets that we would sand down and paint before installing, as against ready to install kitchen cabinets that come painted and complete in flat boxes and just have to be assembled.
For us there was no real choice: we picked up a set of ready-to-assemble units that would go with the kitchen cabinet design we had settled on from the manufacturer's plans.
Then came the accessories. We had not been aware of the range of cabinet accessories there are available. Our old kitchen had had a couple of (now ancient!) accessories. One in the corner of the kitchen where the bench top made a turn. The old design had put a turning shelf under there -- a so-called "lazy suzie". We opted for an accessory-free corner in our new kitchen, but one with a far superior door arrangement to the earlier one. This has worked well for us.
DIY kitchen cabinets are a real possibility for most people I would say, especially if they are being helped by someone who has done it before. Full instructions stepped up through the assembly, and the only real problem we might have face if we'd been doing this on our own was the leveling of the top of the cabinets, just before we put the bench top across them all.
Len McGrane writes about kitchen cabinets at his website http://www.kitchen-cabinet-help.com
